“How come no one noticed they were short a clone?” asked Becks.

Kelly shrugged, shaking off her brief malaise. “Clones are considered lab waste. Anyone can dispose of them.”

“So you disposed of the clone that didn’t exist.”

“Exactly.”

“What did I miss?” asked Maggie, coming in with a basket full of tomatoes over one arm. “Hey, Shaun, you’re up. Can I get you anything? Toast? Omelet?”

“An omelet would be great, and you got here just in time to hear the Doc explain how they broke her clone out of storage and slaughtered it like a chicken so she’d be free to come and make herself our problem.” I took another drink of coffee and stopped, grimacing. “Also, you got any Coke?”

Alaric and Becks exchanged a look. Maggie simply nodded, saying, “I’ll get you one in a minute,” as she continued across the kitchen to begin fussing with her harvest. “Keep talking, everybody. I’m sure I’ll catch right up.”

“Great.” I looked back to Kelly. “Carry on, Doc. We’re burning daylight here, and you’ve just made that a rare commodity around these parts.”

“My clone wasn’t slaughtered like a chicken,” she protested. “Dr. Wynne knows some people. Professional people. He hired them to break in and shoot the clone after we’d decanted it. They guaranteed a kill on the first shot. It didn’t have time to suffer.”

“And then you ran for us.”

“And then I ran for youKelly glanced away. Her gaze fell on the open door and she grimaced, looking down at her lap instead. “Your… There were a lot of records detailing the progression of Georgia Mason’s retinal Kellis-Amberlee. The particular nature of your mutual upbringing provided an invaluable source of data.”

“Meaning what, exactly?” asked Maggie, putting a skillet on the stove.

“She means there were cameras on us all the time when we were kids, and we got a lot of med tests so we could follow the ’rents into proscribed areas.” I watched Kelly. Kelly kept watching her lap. “It made George a great case study, without any of those pesky release forms getting in the way.”

“Mm-hmm,” said Kelly, looking up. “That also makes you a great case study.”

“Me?”

You, confirmed George, quietly. Prolonged exposure to someone with a reservoir condition is odd enough, but for you to be my—

“—makes your immunological reactions uniquely fascinating,” said Kelly, her words overlaying Georgia’s until she drowned out the voice in my head. I managed not to jump. My hand still shook hard enough to slosh the remainder of my coffee dangerously close to the edge. I put the cup down on the table. Kelly didn’t seem to notice. “We would have been asking you to come in for some tests later this year if our study had been allowed to develop normally. Just to see if there were any deep abnormalities that might explain why she developed retinal Kellis-Amberlee and you didn’t. Of course, with Georgia dead, there’s always the possibility whoever’s killing the people with reservoir conditions could come after you, instead. We don’t know what the motive is there.”

“So combine Shaun’s possibly f**ked-up immune system with all the footage we’ve got, and our known connections to the research team, and we’re a target, is that it?” asked Becks. “Note for the future? This is the sort of shit you should maybe lead off with. ‘Hi, nice to see you, just faked my own death, and PS, the people who want me dead are probably after you, too.’ ”

“Yes,” said Maggie pleasantly, as she started cracking eggs into the pan. “It might’ve saved Dave’s life.”

“That’s not fair,” interjected Kelly.

Maggie ignored her. “Two eggs or three, Shaun?”

“Three, please. I doubt we’re going to be stopping for a big lunch.”

“Good. Will you need to bury her body in the forest behind my house tonight, or will you be keeping her around a little longer for informational purposes?” This question was asked just as pleasantly as the last. Maggie’s tone didn’t hold anything to indicate that killing Kelly was of any more or less importance than my omelet.

Maggie can be like that sometimes. She’s grown beyond her upbringing, for the most part, but sometimes she’s still a spoiled little rich girl whose response to things she doesn’t like begins and ends with getting rid of them.

It’s better not to argue with her when she gets that way. “Informational purposes, but I promise to let you know when that changes,” I said. Kelly paled. I decided that the polite thing would be to ignore it. “Any news out of Oakland?”

“The announcement of Dave’s death went up about an hour ago,” said Alaric, quietly.

“Okay.” I looked at my coffee, and sighed. “What do our site stats look like?”

“Up five percent globally, Dave’s reports are up thirty-five percent, and we have three syndication requests for his Alaska material from last year.” Alaric sounded a lot more confident in this answer. That wasn’t surprising. Next to Mahir, there’s nobody who tracks our standings as carefully as Alaric does.

“Did Maggie fill you in on the cover story?” Everyone nodded. “Good. Has anyone posted?” Everyone shook their heads. “Not so good. I need you all online. We were camping in Santa Cruz, our apartment got blown up, we’re shaken, we’re going to stay in the field for a few days while we recover. Maggie, I want you to make it clear that you’re here alone. Tack on a poem I don’t understand, with lots of creepy-ass death imagery—the usual—and then if you can double security, that would probably be a bonus. Nobody say anything about the Doc. She’s not here.”